James Spader is used to playing the black sheep in an acting ensemble. As an actor, he tilts against the winds of popular convention. He zigs where others zag. Physically, he resembles an accountant, or perhaps a banker — Everyman, which suits his chameleon-like ability to play strange, offbeat characters who are not entirely there. He’s enigmatic, fond of playing the enigma inside a riddle wrapped in a mystery.

The only thing he will not do is play the same role twice.

PHOTO: NBCJames Spader

So, after winning three Emmy Awards for playing ethically challenged attorney Alan Shore in Boston Legal, and after a brief stint as office boss and former Dunder Mifflin CEO Robert California in the eighth season of The Office, Spader resolved to play something entirely different in his next role.

Enter Raymond (Red) Reddington, the anti-hero at the heart of The Blacklist, which in three short weeks has staked an early claim as the surprise breakout hit of the still-young fall TV season. Reddington is cold and calculating, but exceedingly intelligent — a savant at reading emotions and bending people to do his will. When The Blacklist opens, he’s a wanted fugitive and criminal mastermind who, unexpectedly, turns himself in and convinces the FBI that he’s now willing to work on their behalf, as a criminal informant with a direct line to terrorists, people smugglers, drug barons and double agents working deep inside the U.S. government. Red Reddington is charming, loquacious, charismatic, irrepressible and constantly scheming — in short, a delight to play.

In person, Spader has a touch of Reddington in him. There’s a part of Spader in all his prominent roles. He will listen, then answer a question with a long silence, then suddenly speak when least expected, then stop just as suddenly. He’s unerringly polite and deferential, but sharp as a tack — and unafraid to show it. Spader doesn’t just play Red Reddington — he is Red Reddington. At least, that’s what he wants the viewer to think.

If The Blacklist shows any sign of being must-see TV — and the early numbers suggest exactly that — then Spader is the reason.

PHOTO: NBCJames Spader as Raymond (Red) Reddington

“People seem to have short memories when it comes to pop culture, but I do think it helps if whatever you come up with next is a departure, in a different world, ” Spader said. “If that world is different, then the inhabitants of that world are easier to accept, provided it’s well drawn. The world here in The Blacklist is very different, I must say. I’ve never really reflected on that, but it’s true. I did Lincoln last year, and that was worlds removed from anything I’d done before and certainly very different from anything I’ve been doing recently. And yet it stood up well on its own.

“Obviously, with a television series, one has to be cognizant of that. That’s why, if you’ve done something for a period of time, it’s prudent to do other things before you jump into something new that you’re also going to do for a period of time.”

PHOTO: NBCTom Noonan as Stewmaker, left, with James Spader as Raymond (Red)

Spader spent five years on Boston Legal.

“Six-and-a-half, I think,” he corrected, without missing a beat — and making it sound as if he had measured the clock the entire way.

Apologies for the interruption.

“You didn’t. And if you had, that would be fine, too.”

The Office received mixed notices in its final seasons, but Spader has fond memories. The character of Robert California, quirky and peculiar in his own way, resonated with Spader on a personal level.

“My first exposure to The Office was in the finale, the season Michael Scott [Steve Carell] retired. At the time I agreed to do it, I told them, ‘This is a one-off, right? There’s no commitment to anything further.’ I had such fun doing it, though. The timing was right. I had a ball, working with those people in just that one episode.

“Two things happened. I was offered Lincoln, a film that everybody was doing for very little money. And yet the commitment was for eight months in advance. I had just finished doing a play in New York, and needed to earn some money. I was hesitant about doing the film. I was worried about making that commitment if something came along in the meantime that actually paid the bills. Lo and behold, they aired the season, and people seemed to respond to the character. They called up and told me they’d love to have me back in any capacity I was willing to do. I told them, ‘Great, just so long as you can let me out for the fall so I can do this film.’ And they agreed.

The emotional core of The Blacklist — and its most closely guarded secret — is the enigmatic, hard-to-define relationship between Reddington and Elizabeth Keen, the young, neophyte FBI agent played by Megan Boone that Reddington takes under his wing and shows a disturbing interest in.

PHOTO: NBCJames Spader

“It’s clear, even from the pilot, that there is a past between the two of them that she is not aware of,” Spader said, willing to talk about it but also unwilling to give anything away unnecessarily. “He has an intimate knowledge of her past and her childhood, relatives of hers, and so on. The relationship is obsession at first, and it’s not based in any reality. As the story starts to unfold, that becomes the driving force for the story, what the basis of their relationship really is. It’s invoked in the viewers’ mind, but if you watch the show really closely it’s based on imagery more than anything else.”

PHOTO: NBCDiego Klattenhoff as Donald Ressler, left, with James Spader as Raymond (Red)

It was Spader’s decision to shave his head, in one of the most striking images from the pilot episode, when he removes his fedora while surrendering to the authorities.

“I loved that juxtaposition, in the opening sequence, when he surrenders himself,” Spader said. “I had very long hair when I went to New York to shoot the pilot. I knew they were going to have a surveillance picture of Reddington on the wall in the background, when he surrenders himself. I thought it would be just a great moment, when he takes his hat off, to have the juxtaposition of him with long hair and then looking like this, as I am now.

“I also thought it would be nice because actors are always burdened with everything they’ve done before, in any role they’re playing. I thought it would be nice to take off my hat and let people see it’s an entirely different person, and an entirely different look to go with that.

PHOTO: NBCJames Spader

“His life for the past 20 years has been all about moving swiftly, from place to place. I thought he should have a haircut that he can do himself, if it came to that, or he can go to a barber shop in a village in Cambodia and they can cut his hair in 10 minutes. His clothes are like that, too. He wears clothes where he can go from a bank to a cave, and he’s dressed accordingly for both. He’s been in a lot of different climates over the last 20 years, so I thought it appropriate that he dress and look as if he’s been able to move thought the world easily and comfortably, without being detected.”

National TV columnist for Postmedia News Network.
Two solitudes:
“My dream is to have a bank of TVs where all the different channels are on at the same time and I can be monitoring them,” the social... read more critic Camille Paglia told Wired magazine, back in the day, before Big Brother and before Survivor. “I love the tabloid stuff. The trashier the program is, the more I feel it’s TV.”
And then there’s this, from Gilligan’s Island creator Sherwood Schwartz: “There’s a lot of underlying philosophy to the characters on Gilligan’s Island. They’re really a metaphor for the nations of the world, and their purpose was to show how nations have to get along together . . . or cease to exist.”
There you have it, then. The trashier a program is, the more it’s like TV. Or, if you prefer, TV is a metaphor for the nations of the world, and Gilligan’s Island was really a message about why we don’t all get along.
That’s where I come in.
My first TV memory was of being menaced by a Dalek on Doctor Who — the original, scratchy, black-and-white Who.
My more recent TV memories include the Sopranos finale; 9/11; Elvis Costello’s first appearance (and temporary banishment) on Saturday Night Live; what was really inside the Erlenmeyer flask in The X-Files; Law & Order (the original, and those iconic chimes); glued to the set at 3am local time during the 2003 war in Iraq — TV’s first real-time war —and Bart Simpson scrawling on the chalkboard in The Simpsons’ opening credits: “I Must Not Write All Over the Walls.”
Other Bart-isms, as seen on that TV chalkboard over the years: “I Will Never Win an Emmy,” “I No Longer Want My MTV,” and, pointedly — if a little hopefully — “Network TV is Not Dead.”
I was there to witness "the new dawn of the sitcom" in the mid-1990s, followed — inevitably — by the glut of terrible sitcoms in the early naughts, a glut that led, directly and indirectly, to the rise of reality TV.
There’s been a lot to talk about — good, bad and indifferent — about TV over the years.
That’s where you, and this space, come in. Read on. Enjoy, feel free to agree, disagree and dispute whenever you want. TV may be ugly at times, but it's a mirror of democracy in action. A funhouse mirror at times, a sober reflection at others.View author's profile